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Sunday, April 3, 2011

Quizboards at MIT

The Edgerton Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers free project-based classes to school groups. This year our entire co-op and another homeschool family took part in the Quizboards program. Kids used a template to create quiz questions at home. The Edgerton staff then gave them the cardboard frame, wires, and paper fasteners so that, with a bit of soldering (the highlight of the class) they created their Quizboards.

The finished board has two alligator clips. One you hold next to the question, the other you touch to your selected answer. If it is correct then the small bulb on the clip lights up.

The Center offers classes for a variety of age groups; the Quizboards are for 9 and up. While the older kids were there, the younger kids walked around the MIT campus with some of the parents. Afterward we traveled two miles up the road to the Boston Museum of Science. On Fridays the museum has a light visitor volume and is open until 9 pm. The kids especially like wandering around the museum with their friends. We had a full and wonderful day of science!

2 comments:

Speaking of MIT, did you see that they are partnering with the Smithsonian for an 8 wk online mystery science game for middle grades? Here is the link in case you are interested. I signed up, but know very little about it except for what is here.

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On Science, Learning, and Faith

"Books dealing with science as with history, say, should be of a literary character, and we should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all the text-books which swell publishers' lists and nearly all the chalk expended so freely on our blackboards."Charlotte MasonA Philosophy of Education

"Some teachers may give a live lesson from a stuffed specimen, and other teachers may stuff their pupils with facts about a live specimen; of the two, the former is preferable."Anna Botsford ComstockHandbook of Nature Study

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”

Pope John Paul II

"Beautiful is what we see.More beautiful is what we understand.Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend."Bl. Nicolas StenoFounder of modern geology

"Go my Sons, burn your books and buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the sea shores, and the deep recesses of the earth...Observe and experiment without ceasing, for in this way and no other will you arrive at a knowledge of the true nature of things." Petrus Severinus16th century Danish alchemist

"All this propaganda for literacy of one sort or another comes from people who believe that everyone should share their particular views of what the most important knowledge is and what conclusions should be drawn from it; in other words, they want others to be indoctrinated."Henry H. BauerScientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method

"Furthermore, and contrary to popular belief, the Church never supported the idea that the earth is flat, never banned human dissection, never banned the zero, and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas."James HannamThe Genesis of Science